


two paths converged in a yellow wood

by Senatsu



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 04:26:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6315007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senatsu/pseuds/Senatsu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which two different witches are promised a firstborn by two different people. In a strange twist of fate, these two different people have a child together, raising a dilemma regarding which witch is to receive the rights to guardianship of the child. </p><p>The solution?</p><p>Joint custody, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	two paths converged in a yellow wood

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a tumblr post: 
> 
> moriartythetease: So what happens if two people who have promised their firstborn to separate witches have a child together? Do they both just pop up in the nursery and have a custody battle?
> 
> copperbadge: And then the witches, forced to share a cottage while raising their joint stolen child, fall in love...

A rustle.

A glimmer.

A soft rush of air, as if the world sighs around her.

Then the earth is firm beneath her feet again, and the warm smells of the cottage envelope her: the woodsmoke of the fire that keeps the early spring chill at bay, the faint floral scent of freshly steeped tea on the nearby table, the musky whiff of a straw mattress.

Amaryllis opens her eyes.

“Ashford,” she says cordially to the man before her, her voice soft as the rustling of leaves.

He nods his head respectfully, though his mouth cuts a grim line across the angles of his face.

But then, Amaryllis hardly expected a warm welcome.

She’s a witch who’s come for his child, after all.

“It would seem the time to fulfill our agreement is upon us,” she says.

“About that…” Ashford drags a hand over his close-cropped hair. Motion catches at the corner of the witch’s eye: a young woman drifting in to stand beside Ashford. The dark-skinned man exchanges a glance with his companion. He exhales, short and sharp, and makes eye contact with Amaryllis again. “There’s something you should know. We—”

A flash of light blinds them all. A sharp sound rends the quiet of the cottage like a clap of thunder.

Stunned, blinking away the spots in her vision, the witch whirls on the two, anger curling itself around her limbs like a choking vine. “You _did not_ \--” she begins to hiss, fingers going tight against her palms.

“Sierra!” The new voice carries across the room, loud and self-assured. “The time has come! Your child is mine!”

Ashford extends his hands palm-outward toward Amaryllis, his tension turning to fear. “Please,” he says urgently, his brown eyes serious. “It’s not what you think. I didn’t promise the child to another, I swear to the gods! But she and I…”

“We made separate contracts before we met,” the woman beside him says at last, her chin raising defiantly in spite of her obvious fatigue. It can only have been a handful of days since the birth of the child; it’s a wonder she’s not currently resting. “We’ve done no wrong by you.” There is an underlying pallor to the warm terra cotta of her skin, and dark circles beneath her eyes, but her spine is straight and her shoulders squared.

Amaryllis waves a distracted hand toward a rough-hewn rocking chair in the corner. “Please, sit,” she murmurs, the sharp thorns of anger already dulling and withdrawing as her mind circles curiously around the problem.

Two witches, contracted by separate individuals, bound to the same child?

Who had ever heard of such a thing?

It seems, however, that the other witch is not so easily placated into contemplation.

“What do you mean, separate contracts?!” she demands, striding over to the man and woman, throwing a pointed jab at their faces. “That child is mine, and I _will not_ be leaving empty-handed!”

Amaryllis slips up beside the newcomer, curling a dark hand over the other witch’s finger and gently guiding it down. “Calm yourself,” she says, frowning. “We both have rights to the guardianship of the child. You will not resolve this issue simply by shouting about it.”

The stranger whirls on her, eyes sparking. “Who the hell are you, anyway?!” she snaps, crossing her arms.

Amaryllis sighs. If the unnecessarily flashy entrance from before wasn’t proof enough of the other witch’s inexperience, the hotheadedness certainly doesn’t help the impression any.

The more composed of the two witches folds her hands neatly, gazing squarely into the stranger’s eyes. “Amaryllis, of the Hippeastrum Guild,” she says, inclining her head. “And yourself?”

The other witch snorts, tossing her hair. “Bluebell,” she says, “of the Scilla Guild,” and Amaryllis thinks, perhaps, that there is an underlying current of false bravado. “Just what makes you think that I’m going to concede that _you_ have any right to this child?!”

Amaryllis runs a thumb over the back of her other hand, the urge to respond sharply more tempting than she’d care to admit. “Ashford, the proof of contract, if you would?”

Ashford, who still thrums with tension like the taut strings of a lyre, nods quickly and hooks a finger into the collar of his shirt, drawing it down. There, roughly a hand’s width beneath the collarbone, is a mark of deep crimson, crafted of strange scrolls and curlicues and a tiny script that carries centuries within its lines.

Such marks come part-and-parcel with a witch’s contract – harmless to the wearer, automatically removed upon the fulfillment of the agreed terms – and as she makes a slow pass of her hand in the air near Ashford, the delicate, token-sized mark glows gently in response.

Bluebell grinds her teeth irritably, her foot tapping out a staccato rhythm against the stone floor. “Ugh, all right, fine, so you’re maybe telling the truth. But what the hell are we going to do about it?! This has never happened before!” As if in afterthought, she waves vaguely towards Sierra, and a subtle glow shimmers beneath the rough fabric of the woman’s dress, near her heart.

A few sparks escape Bluebell’s fingertips as she waves, and Amaryllis huffs a quiet breath that verges on laughter. The sparks are almost certainly unconscious in nature – this girl is definitely wet behind the ears in matters of witchery.

“I see you’ve your learner’s license, but no master?” she remarks, noting the earring in Bluebell’s right ear and the bare lobe of her left.

This seems to catch the younger witch by surprise, who steps back reflexively. Then she scowls. “Yeah, so?! You wanna pull seniority on me or something?!”

Amaryllis allows herself a small smile. “Hardly,” she replies, her voice dry as the fallen leaves of autumn. “I simply thought that perhaps offering you an apprenticeship under me would make it easier to fulfill the dual-guardianship of the child.”

Bluebell’s mouth falls open in shock, and Amaryllis has to resist the laugh that threatens to bubble out of her.

“You’re… you’re not putting me on?” Bluebell says at last, her voice colored with a surprising hesitance.

The bubble of laughter disappears, replaced with puzzlement. “Why would I be putting you on?”

The candid response seems to bring Bluebell back around, and she crosses her arms again. “N… no reason,” she mutters. “Fine, I guess that’s… that’s good enough for now.” She holds out her hand expectantly, almost glaring at Amaryllis. “It’s a deal.”

Amaryllis reaches out to shake the offered hand, to seal the offer, gazing back at her apprentice-to-be.

Their palms collide—

—and no sooner does skin meet skin than the two are stumbling back in surprise.

Amaryllis could swear she feels the lingering aftershocks of sparks in her veins, and though there seems to be no sign of damage or pain, she rubs the flesh of her arm reflexively.

When she looks up, she catches Bluebell doing the same.

“Wh… what’s your element?!” the younger witch demands suddenly.

“Water,” Amaryllis murmurs automatically, still spaced out.

“It was like a freaking river…” Bluebell mutters, more to herself than anything, staring at her own arm as though it is alien to her.

Then someone coughs awkwardly in the background, and Amaryllis realizes abruptly that in the heat of the moment, they’ve completely forgotten about their contractors.

She turns gracefully on her heel and bows courteously to the blood-parents. “With that settled,” she says, her voice again gentle and crisp like an early autumn evening, “we will receive your child, as promised.”

Though his brows have knit with a seemingly complex brew of emotions, Ashford nods in relief. Sierra sits in the rocking chair, clearly already exhausted from what little standing she’d done; Ashford puts a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then exits the main room, returning a short while later with a little gurgling bundle in his arms.

“Here,” he says, his voice swinging low and quiet, and he gingerly slips the bundle into Amaryllis’s waiting grasp.

She nods once to him, their gazes meeting for a moment. She is not certain what to make of the look in his eyes – there is relief, there is sadness, and perhaps there is something else altogether – but it is hardly an opportune time to ask.

Perhaps she will learn more another time.

Instead, she turns back to Bluebell, shifting closer to the younger witch and holding out the baby. “Look well, Bluebell,” she says softly, as Sierra and Ashford look on silently. “This is the life that has been entrusted to us.”

For a moment, Bluebell appears stunned once again, as if not having followed the entire scenario to its logical conclusion.

“So. Uh,” she manages, gazing distractedly down at the infant’s face. “What… what now?”

Amaryllis finally allows a bit of laughter to spring free, rocking the little one gently in her arms. “Now, I take both of you home,” she said, eyeing the expression on the other witch with amusement.

 _‘From an empty house to a household of three,’_ she muses privately.

_‘This is certainly going to be interesting.’_

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to write more chapters of this, but I'm not a very disciplined writer as of yet, we'll see how this goes!
> 
> If you like, stop by and say hi on tumblr, my tumblr is laurelsing-abc! :)


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